News
1 CommentH1Z1 tournament to air on The CW in primetime
H1Z1: King of the Kill is headed to primetime television. The finale of a $300,000 tournament series is set to air April 20 on The CW Network at 9 pm ET.
Daybreak Game Company, formerly known as Sony Online Entertainment, launched H1Z1 into Steam’s Early Access in February 2015. The zombie-themed online multiplayer survival game was originally expected to be free-to-play, but it eventually split into two games — H1Z1: Just Survive and H1Z1: King of the Kill — both retailing for $19.99. Throughout its lifespan the competitive mode, originally called Battle Royale, has been incredibly popular. It remains among the most-played games on Steam and the most-streamed games on Twitch.
The “tournament and eSports docuseries” will be called H1Z1: Fight for the Crown and will launch on The CW and...
Cover Story
Issue
25
January 9, 2017
Final Fantasy 7: An oral history
30,000 words! 35 interviews! 4 videos! A trivia minigame! We take an in-depth look back at Square’s breakthrough role-playing game.
Read moreDishonored 2 guide
0 CommentsDishonored 2 collectibles guide
There are four types of collectibles in Dishonored 2 — runes, bonecharms, paintings and blueprints. In this guide, we'll show you how to find every one of them.
Looking for a walkthrough?
Our Dishonored 2 coverage doesn't end with a full walkthrough. We also have a Dishonored 2 walkthrough that will show you how to beat the game stealthily or … murder-ly. It's your call.
Table of contents
All A Long Day in Dunwall collectibles
All Edge of the World collectibles
All The Good Doctor collectibles
All The Clockwork Mason collectibles
All The Royal Conservatory collectibles
All Dust District collectibles
All A Crack in the Slab collectibles
All The Grand Palace collectibles
All Death to the Empress collectibles
Video
3 CommentsElder Scrolls Online: Morrowind has its first gameplay trailer, new screenshots
The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind dropped its first gameplay trailer today, and it’s custom built to send your nostalgia into overdrive.
The video, which is included above, is set to a motion-picture style orchestral soundtrack. You’ll see familiar locations from the 2002 classic, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, recreated in the modern MMO engine. We recognized Seyda Need, that games’ backwater swamp town, as well as Balmora where its first major quest line took place. There’s also a smattering of giant mushrooms, dwemer ruins and more bone armor than you can shake a glass mace at.
The Elder Scrolls Online takes place 700 years before The Elder Scrolls 3, but that’s not stopped the developers from including locations made famous in Elder Scrolls games, including the imperial city of...
News
24 CommentsThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild wins Best of Gamescom 2016
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took top honors in Gamescom 2016's list of award winners shown at the four-day expo.
Breath of the Wild, which caused near-stampedes at E3 2016, was tapped for Best of Gamescom as well as best console game for Wii U. For Honor, Ubisoft Montreal's hack-and-slash game, was named best game on both PC and the PlayStation 4 (it will also launch on Xbox One). Sea of Thieves, the pirate adventure from Rare, was named best Xbox One game and best multiplayer game. All three are due to release in 2017.
Little Nightmares, by Tarsier Games (to be published by Bandai Namco), took the Gamescom Indie Award and Electronic Arts' forthcoming Battlefield 1 claimed best action honors as well as Gamescom's Consumer Award.
The full list of winners may be seen here....
News
5 CommentsMore huge Hearthstone changes incoming with Arena mode tweaks
It’s been a big month of long-anticipated announcements for Hearthstone, including card nerfs, changes to the ranked mode ladder format and some cards shifting out of standard as the game enters the Year of the Mammoth. Blizzard isn’t done with the news, however, as it hits players with another big announcement today.
This time the changes are focused around Arena mode. In this mode, which has existed mostly unchanged since before Hearthstone’s full launch in 2014, players must pay either 150 gold or $1.99 to buy in to a run. Once you’re in, you choose one card from a set of three over and over until you have a full deck of 30 cards. Then you play against others who put together their deck the same way until you lose three times or manage to get the maximum of 12 wins. A reward is doled...
News
2 CommentsRocket League Original Minis toys expanding with light-up cars (update)
Rocket League’s upcoming pull-back racers from Zag Toys’ Original Minis aren’t the only toys in the works. Those 12 cars will soon be joined by a line of light-up cars, Zag Toys told Polygon at Toy Fair New York today.
The light-up toy cars will feature LEDs for the vehicles’ headlights, as you would expect. But since Rocket League is a game about jet-fueled battle cars, these toys will also illuminate at the back — with a “cloud” of rocket exhaust. Zag Toys plans to release the light-up cars this summer, after the spring debut of the pull-back racers.
For both lines of toys, the initial rollout of cars will just be a start. While Zag wouldn’t let us take photos at Toy Fair because the vehicles were pre-production prototypes, the non-final retail box for the toys featured a “Series 1”...
News
45 CommentsIs this Overwatch’s next hero?
Blizzard Entertainment appears to be ramping up to a reveal of a new hero for Overwatch, posting an “interview” with a previously unseen character: 11-year-old robotics and artificial intelligence prodigy Efi Oladele, a native of Numbani.
The interview with Efi was posted on the Overwatch website under the Atlas News byline, the same byline used to provide early details or background on the game’s other characters, including Sombra and Soldier: 76.
While it seems unlikely that an 11-year-old would be the game’s next hero — pulling off sick headshots as Widowmaker on a little kid might just feel weird — it’s Efi’s expertise in building things that may point to who (or what) is coming to Overwatch next. From the interview:
How did you get into robots and artificial intelligence?
Well,...
Rogue Legacy creators reveal new brawler, Full Metal Furies
The team behind roguelike platformer Rogue Legacy is working on a new team-based brawler called Full Metal Furies, developer Cellar Door Games announced today. Bound for Xbox One and Windows PC, Full Metal Furies “will challenge you to think like a team, and to rethink what a brawler could be,” according to its creators.
Full Metal Furies was developed “completely around cooperation,” the developer said in a news release. Up to four players can play as one of four character roles (sentinel, engineer, sniper, fighter) and battle creatures from Greek mythology (titans, minotaurs, lycoans).
Cellar Door will also offer something for the lone single player as well. As seen in Full Metal Furies’ announcement trailer above, players can “quick-swap” between two characters on the fly, chaining...
Resident Evil 7 guide
4 CommentsResident Evil 7 guide and walkthrough (update)
In Polygon's Resident Evil 7 guide and walkthrough, we'll show you where to go, how to defeat your enemies and where to find the weapons, keys, collectibles — antique coins, files and Mr. Everywhere statues — you're looking for.
How to use this Resident Evil 7 guide
Resident Evil 7 is both a departure from and a return to form for Capcom's long-running survival horror franchise. Though it unfurls in a single, long campaign without any named levels, Resident Evil 7 does have landmarks that seem an awful lot like levels. We've organized our Resident Evil 7 walkthrough based on these geographical locations that divide the game into sections.
Follow our Resident Evil 7 guide, you'll find the path from the first moments to the final boss battle, with...
Opinion
38 CommentsWorld of Warcraft's gold rush has upended Blizzard’s economy
There has been an economic panic in World of Warcraft. On Feb. 6, Blizzard changed the rules, allowing players to exchange WoW Tokens for Battle.net balance. That means that gold you earn or buy in World of Warcraft can now be used in any Blizzard property.
This has caused wild fluctuations in the value of the tokens, the value of WoW gold and, by extension, the time WoW players spend earning that gold.
Wait, what are we talking about?
WoW Tokens are Blizzard’s mechanism for allowing players to spend real money to buy gold, the in-game currency players can earn from killing monsters, completing quests and selling loot to vendors.
The in-game gold economy has been plagued by shady outfits trying to sell gold for cash since the game launched in 2004, and a litany of other problems,...
News
10 CommentsNBA 2K17’s Sacramento Kings wouldn’t make that DeMarcus Cousins trade
The Sacramento Kings and the New Orleans Pelicans just pulled off a blockbuster trade, with the Kings shipping out one of the league’s best players in DeMarcus Cousins a year before he’s set to become a free agent. The deal, which our friends at SB Nation called “one of the worst trades in NBA history,” is so imbalanced in the Pelicans’ favor that even the video game version of the Kings wouldn’t agree to it.
Here’s a full breakdown of the trade, along with each player’s current rating in NBA 2K17:
Sacramento Kings get:
SG Tyreke Evans, 78
SG Buddy Hield, 74
SG Langston Galloway, 74
2017 first-round draft pick
2017 second-round draft pick
New Orleans Pelicans get:
C DeMarcus Cousins, 93
SF Omri Cassipi, 70
At a 93 overall in NBA 2K17, Cousins is currently the seventh-best player in...
Culture
1 CommentGrand Theft Auto Online mashes up the Full Throttle opening
Of the all-time greats from the halcyon days of point-and-click adventures, nothing compares to Full Throttle. In my mind, anyway.
My answering machine message — when this shit had to be recorded on tape — was Ben's creed: "When I'm on the road, I'm indestructible. No one can stop me; but they try." Every woman in my life hated leaving a message for me, which only made me like Full Throttle more.
So, forgiving a few subpar production values, and the fact Ben's bike doesn't have 98 tailpipes, here is a the best shot-for-shot remake of Full Throttle's opening within Grand Theft Auto 5 that we can find. It makes great use of Grand Theft Auto Online's bikers update, and at least manages to land the shots of Ben vaulting the stretch limo, and ashing his smoke at the end.
Twenty years on,...
News
4 CommentsKolin is Street Fighter 5’s next character. Here’s why you should play her.
Street Fighter 5 adds six characters in its second season, which began with Akuma back in December. Coming next, on Feb. 28, is Kolin, who will be making her playable debut in the franchise. This video from Capcom delivers the lowdown on why she's worth a shot.
Kolin's style appears to be a fast-paced, combo-driven attack to juggle the opponent and keep their stun gauge from recovering. Capcom community manager Matt Edwards explains in greater detail (and in a vernacular more familiar to Street Fighter players), why she’s worth a look, even if her strikes do not deal as much damage.
Kolin first appeared as an NPC in 1997's Street Fighter 3: New Generations as the valet of Gill, that game's principal antagonist. Gill gave her her ice powers, so she likes him a lot.
Kolin is available...
For Honor guide
9 CommentsFor Honor’s multiplayer modes explained
For Honor’s multiplayer takes a few different form, ultimately pouring into the Faction War — a broader meta-narrative that spans For Honor’s online multiplayer modes. All of the battles you fight across all of For Honor’s multiplayer modes — dominion, deathmatch, and duel and brawl — add up to determine the course of the ongoing war between the three factions — knights, samurai and vikings. In this guide, we’ll teach you how it all it works.
The metagame: How For Honor multiplayer works
After every match, you’ll be awarded war assets to distribute among disputed territories. Every six hours, those disputed territories update, and whichever faction has the most assets gets control. Those territories determine the maps you play on and some cosmetic features of those maps.
...
News
38 CommentsMass Effect: Andromeda gameplay video goes in-depth on combat
Mass Effect: Andromeda developer BioWare kicked off its “gameplay series” videos today with a deep dive on combat, showing off the options that the Ryder twins will have at their disposal when it comes to defending themselves.
The video offers the longest look yet at in-game footage of Andromeda, with five and a half minutes’ worth of action featuring both gunplay and special powers.
A voice-over introduces the various weapons that will be available in the game: melee weapons plus four types of guns (pistols, shotguns, assault rifles and sniper rifles). The firearms are split into three classes, depending on their origin. Milky Way guns are traditional ballistic weapons, firing physical projectiles at enemies. Remnant weapons use energy beams; they’re very accurate even with a high rate...
For Honor guide
12 CommentsUnderstanding For Honor: A guide to bizarre combat
For Honor controls unlike any game you’ve played before. Once you accept that, our recommendation will sound less strange: Spend your first hour or so just learning to fight. Nothing else. We’re going to devote this entire For Honor guide just to combat. That’s how weird it is.
Why is fighting worth a whole guide? Because the most important part about learning to play For Honor (let alone getting good at playing For Honor) is understanding its weird controls. Trust us: Investing the time to learn how to block, dodge, guard, fight, parry, throw and attack keeps you from spending your first several hours mashing buttons and throwing controllers.
In this guide, we’ll explain it all — and show it with videos that turn the frantic combat into easily digestible demonstrations. After you put...
News
9 CommentsHomefront: The Revolution’s final expansion coming in March
It’s been months since Homefront: The Revolution developer Dambuster Studios provided an update on post-release plans for the game, so you could’ve been forgiven for wondering if the company had abandoned it. Today, though, Dambuster resurfaced to announce future plans, including downloadable content.
Beyond the Walls, the third and final piece of single-player DLC in Homefront: The Revolution’s season pass, will be released in March, according to Dambuster. The studio said that it has been “working incredibly hard” on the add-on as well as “remaining issues.” When the game launched in May 2016, it was lambasted for serious performance issues, including a low and inconsistent frame rate. Dambuster issued a patch to address some of the problems in August.
While Dambuster didn’t provide...
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